I don't think it's as dumb as some people claim. The basic premise is that everything could run off of a single mainline/bus.
I think the inefficiencies are overstated and gains are generally underrated.
I think the inefficiencies are overstated and gains are generally underrated.
However, it gets more interesting if you're not flying like a bird between the two points. If you are taking metro rail, you care about your distance to a stop which you will walk plus the travel time that you will ride, and number of transfers. As you see, it becomes a lot more complicated. You would have to put down a lot more rail so that every person in a circle is within 200 M of a rail line.
A line 170km by 200m wide has an area of 34km^2. This equals a circle with a diameter of 6.6km.
it would take 694km of rail to fill that circle with a grid so that no point is further than 100m from the lines.
The same holds true for your power, water and sewage infrastructure.
Rail stations wouldn't be 200m apart, though, so maximum distance to the lines is too simplistic a measure to use for this.
Neom will run into the same problem, except without the ability to first scale laterally. There's a reason logistical systems aren't a straight fuckin line. Cities are logistics machines.
I think the average Factorio noob has put more thought into layout design than the architects of Neom.
I can think off many ideas off the top of my head which would be striking, revolutionary, and less dumb than a line when it comes to logistics. Hell, even a circle (of limited width) would be better, as your worst case transit time immediately is cut in half.